Scientology is not a religion. Scientology is a mind control cult with the purpose of conning people out of large sums of money, enslaving them if possible, and of course world domination.
I was a scientologist for almost eight years and worked out in LA at "Big Blue." This complex used to be the Cedars of Sinai hospital but was purchased by Hubbard and company back in the 1970's. It is where ASHO, AOLA, and the LA orgs are, as well as a good portion of OSA. They've remodeled most everything there so some things might have changed since then.
In any case I am here to tell anyone who will listen that Scientology is evil. I don't make that kind of a claim lightly. Scientology is a cult made up of people who have ceased to think for themselves and are no longer acting in their own best interest but are instead being manipulated and coerced into living for the cult, to their own detriment. There are so many things that Scientology does that are wrong that it is difficult to know where to begin in detailing them all. Scientology is to me a weird conglomeration of Nazi-esque nonsense, corporate abuse of the public trust, and organized crime.
Others whose words are far better than mine have already detailed the nature of Scintology's evil far better than I can at 7 am. The link below points to a website that has just about every significant book written that exposes the evil nature of scientology:
The open architecture of the PC may have been accidental, but no one can argue that it was not successful. Many Macolytes like to scream and shout about Microsoft and how the Redmond dragon did them in. In truth it was not Microsoft but scores of companies all producing and/or selling compatible systems while simultaneously competing with one another on price and performance that did Apple in. Apple is an example of a failed monopoly. Microsoft's monopoly exists because it rode the wave of an open platform, the PC. Today Apple is an also-ran and has been for some time now. Microsoft has kept them on life support because they are useful as token "competition." What will happen when and if Microsoft is finally pimp slapped I don't know.
This whole business sounds VERY fishy to me. My suspicion is that this is nothing but the beginnings of a ploy at "social engineering." Right now the loony left has already infiltrated many public schools and instituted a bunch of BS, supposedly in order to preserve and raise the "self esteem" of students. The truth is that the loony left is bent on undermining western civilization as a whole, especially the middle class or "bourgeois." Most, if not all forms and examples of political correctness are nothing more than a part of this effort. This new "study" just seems to me to be the latest weapon in the ongoing war against common sense. It isn't enough to sucker people into believing that self esteem is more important character and achievement, but damaging someone's self esteem will not somehow make them stupid and damage their character.
I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying it. Those pieces of shit ought to be ashamed of themselves for even trying to con us with something so ridiculous.
All I can say is that there aren't enough libertarians around.
The problem here is more than that of companies being heavy handed and attempting to use force to silence people. The problem is that there are lawyers out there who are willing to be their mercenaries.
Lawyers like that are who give the legal profession as a whole a bad name.
I find myself having fantasies about lying in wait near the home of one of these lawyers and blowing their head to bits with a high powered rifle as they are out getting the paper in their bath robe. I won't do that of course, because I know that to do so would only cause more problems. As much as I hate these fuckers I don't want anyone else to do something like that either. There is more evil at work in the world than that represented by these lawyers. There are people and groups whose every thought and action is towards depriving others of liberty. Were someone to go on a shyster shooting spree it would only play into the hands of those who are working to destroy the second amendment (among other things).
Undermining the second amendment just to whack someone who is undermining the first isn't exactly a good idea in the long run. The first and second amendments are the bedrock of our democracy. They are what ensure that, even if all else fails, tyranny will not prevail.
Instead of shyster assasinations, what needs to happen is for news of cases of these SLAPP suits to be disseminated as widely as possible. Use the very thing these suits attack, the first amendment, to hurt the suits behind the suits. Create enough bad publicity that the suits become a double edged sword to anyone behind them. Imagine if a company lost 20% of its customers after SLAPPing someone. Would they do it again?
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. There are more threats to our freedoms from all sides than what most people are aware of. On the left you've got socialists, communists, political correctness, and your garden variety "liberals". On the right religious whacko's, corrupt corporations and "family values." Which side is right? If you ask me I'd say neither. Both are vile in my opinion. Both are equally harmful and undermine human rights, the only difference is the approach that is taken and the rhetoric and justifications that are used.
In the end however, it is not these evils that are the greatest threat. The greatest threat is that your average citizen is not aware of them, or does nothing about them when they are. All that is required for evil to win is for good people to do nothing. That is the status quo in America, people doing nothing. Those who are not vigilant, who do not fight back, are the true villans. The wolf is always at the door. That is the nature of the wolf. Blaming the wolf for getting in when someone opened the door for him isn't exactly rational. Its like blaming fire for burning a building when an arsonist started the blaze, or a car for killing a pedestrian when it was a drunk driver at the wheel. Its up to each of us to keep that door closed. When we fail we have no one but ourselves to blame.
Make that X/((1+inflation_rate)^y). So with an inflation rate of three percent its X/(1.03^Y). If you don't add in the one you end up with a lot MORE money than when you started, not less.
Instead of charging someone X number of dollars for the cost of recycling, they should charge X*2 number of dollars and then PAY each person who brings in a computer X number of dollars.
That way people would have an incentive to do the right thing instead of just dumping it someplace and the program would pay for itself due to inflation and the fact that not EVERYONE is going to recycle, even if it pays.
As for the inflation angle, it works like this. If someone pays you X number of dollars and Y number of years later you pay them back the same exact ammount of money, well then you're actually paying them X/(inflation_rate^Y) in real dollars. This is why you almost NEVER see interest free loans, the lenders lose money on them. In the case of computers, the lifespan is short enough that the devaluation of the money from inflation would not be so great as to reduce it to nothing.
Sun offers Solaris 8 on x86 at no charge for non-commerical and educational use. It does not offer Solaris for free for commercial use. Also there isn't going to be a version of Solaris 9 for the PC, meaning users are being hung out to dry. I shouldn't even have to mention the fact that the source code to Solaris is proprietary.
Linux on the other hand is FREE in every sense. It's free to use, free to look at, free to change, and free to redistribute.
I don't know if you're just trolling or if you're seriously deranged. If its the former take some grow up pills. if its the latter take some happy pills. Of course if you're already on drugs JUST SAY NO!
Why would anyone WANT to run classic MacOS apps on a PC? The classic OS was one of the main things that has hobbled Apple over the years, trying to emulate/replicate it on another platform would be an exercise in applied stupidity. OS-X is a viable OS, previous versions were not, at least not when compared to Linux, BeOS, NT, etc. The lack of memory protection and reliance on cooperative multitasking alone are enough to make me drop it in the circular file. If I wanted those "features" on a PC, I'd use Windows 3.1.
If Apple wanted to create an emulator for the PC to run classic MacOS applictions, ARDI would be the very first place to shop. However an emulator is not a native port, which was my point to begin with. Any port of OS-X to intel would be better off without lugging the albatross of cross platform legacy code compatibility with it. If someone wants to run old mac programs they should run it on a mac, not a PC.
Cringely mentioned a company named ARDI. This is a company that for many years has been working on a Mac hardware and OS emulation environment for PCs. The product is called Executor and it will run many 68k mac Applications. It does not rely on Apple roms or on the MacOS. It is also VERY FAST. There is work being done on a PPC version, but I don't know how far along it is.
In any case I just wanted to point out that what ARDI does would do nothing to help Apple port OSX over to intel. ARDI produces an interesting emulator, but what is needed is a native port of the system itself. Not to mention the fact that Executor is for the 68k and OS-X is written for the PPC, not exactly an insignificant difference.
There is already a version of Darwin for x86. In case you're not familiar, Darwin is the underlying BSD/Mach core OS that OS-X is based upon. Creating a complete port of OS-X would involve porting the upper layers of the system such as Aqua, the upper layer API systems, and the GUI, among other things. Since these layers are undoubtedly written in C and Objective C (another story), and the low-level OS inferfaces they rely on would be the same for the PPC and x86 versions of Darwin, porting them should be very easy to do.
Its kind of like Linux itself. There are x86 versions, Alpha versions, and even PPC versions. These versions are 99% source code compatible. Meaning that code written on one will compile and run on the others with VERY FEW if any changes. The same should be true of OS-X. In fact I would not be a bit suprised if there is already a complete version of OS-X for x86 today. The hackers (!= crackers) at Apple would just be too tempted not to port it as an experiment with Darwin already existing on x86. It would also be created in order for the company to hedge its bets. Should Apple ever have to drop their hardware line, a ready to go version of OS-X for intel would be their primary escape strategy.
Do I expect to see this version of OS-X? Not anytime soon. We may never see it. Back in the 80's Apple developed an x86 version of their classic OS with Novell, it was never released and the project it was developed as part of was dropped. There was also a version of MacOS developed for Apollo to run on their Domain workstations (Apollo was bought out by HP some time ago). This project was also scrapped when Apple dumped Apollo and began trying to cozy up to Sun. So seeking an alternate platform for their operating systems is nothing new, its just that we've never seen any prior examples of this marketed.
Remember a while back when Microsoft tried to buy Corel? That was blocked by the SEC if I recall, but that didn't stop Microsoft from investing in Corel and thereby gaining influence, even if it is behind the scenes under the table influence. It was right around this time that Wordperfect for Linux was dropped as a future product, Corel Linux itself was dropped, Wine development ceased, and the price on the windows version of their Wordperfect Office suite was raised significantly. Coincidence?
The Wordperfect suite was beginning to make some inroads into Microsoft's market share before this happened. I remember you could get the Wordperfect suite for a couple hundred bucks while the Microsoft suite was five hundred if you were lucky (not counting upgrades). Now the price is higher and its progress into MS-Office territory has slowed or stopped.
Sounds to me like a case of Microsoft castrating the competition by investing in it, just like they did with Apple, although in Apple's case it was investing to keep the company alive as token "competition" rather than to remove a real threat.
The GLX portion of th nvidia drivers doesn't seem to care what kernel revision you're running on. The kernel module portion does however. I've been running the preempt patch for some time now with several revisions of Nvidia's drivers. Just get the SRPMS and recompile them. Or get the TGZ versions if you're running a non-RPM distribution (slackware, debian, etc).
I don't know what problems others have or have not had, but I've never had a bit of trouble with the preempt patch.
Wasn't there an article on here a week or two ago about how some cable companies are trying to thwart users who set up in house lans and do NAT? The main sentiment I heard in response to that article was that the cable companies should simply charge people according to the bandwidth they use. Now we hear of a cable company doing just that and I hear a bunch of bitching. I'm sorry folks, but you can't have it both ways. These companies are in business to make money. I get annoyed when I see price gouging and greed, but that isn't what this sounds like. If it is then that means that high profit margins will encourage the entry of competitors into the market, at which point competition will drive the prices back down again.
Lets forget about OS-X for a moment. What LinuxPPC does is fix the mac by providing a real operating system for it. There are macs where I work, and every time I'm stuck using one I start getting crazy notions in my head about taking a sledge hammer to them all, or finding some other way of destroying them. The reason has nothing to do with the hardware they are running. They're not super fast, but I'm not particularly picky in that area. What bugs me about them is the antique operating system they're running. If I wanted cooperative multi-tasking and no memory protection between apps, I'd run windows 3.1. When I sit down in front of a computer I expect the system to be responsive to me, regardless of what it is doing in the background.
One day about a year ago I loaded up the PPC version of SuSE 7.0 onto one of the macs. Lo and behold!!! A new computer was born! Or at least it seemed that way. The computer actually seemed to run FASTER as well as being infinitely more responsive. I was also a great relief to escape from the Macs GUI, which I find cumbersome. It was like I was trying to run with a cinder block tied to my leg and someone just cut the cord. Unfortunately I eventually had to wipe Linux and reinstall MacOS-9 on it.
Nowadays we have OS-X, which is about 6 years late, but better late than never. Its GUI isn't on par with KDE, but its far better than the previous MacOS versions. Its also responsive! Its great to actually be able to have my computer wait on me rather than the other way around. Its not terribly fast, but I'm not going to complain! Much better that it take longer to do things in the background but be more responsive in the foreground than it lock me out. Hopefully IBM/Motorola/Apple will be able to push the PPC architecture further in terms of clock rate.
Then of course there are the standard form-factor PPC motherboards that will soon be available. Whether they will ever outperform an Athlon based system is doubtful, but the fact that they are there and available is a good thing.
Actually Linux distributors can put anything on their CD's they want, provided that they have the permission of whomever owns the code. Debian does refuse to put anything in their distribution that isn't free as in speech, but that is their choice.
The IBM AT (286) came out in 1984, the XT (8088) in 81, and the 8086/88 itself back when disco was still very much the rage and I was in grade school. I cannot think of any reason we should give a rat's ass whether any compiler can create code for these chips anymore. They don't have enough power to run anything more than a text based dumb terminal anyway. My Ti-92 calculator has a more powerful CPU in it (68000) than an XT. We might as well worry about whether GCC can create code for a PDP-11 while we're at it.
Making an open source version of dos would have been a great idea 10 or 15 years ago, but today it just doesn't matter. Is anyone's aversion to MS stuff so strong that they would rather reinvent a version of DOS instead of just using 6.22? There is DRDOS/OpenDOS/whatever-they're-calling-it-now if you don't like MS-DOS.
The only area where 8 and 16 bit chips are of any importance is in embedded systems with low performance requirements. The good news is that for the 68HC11, the most popular microcontroller around, there is a GCC cross compiler available. I've downloaded it and played with it myself, it works.
The more I hear about pointless censorship in Australia, the more I'm convinced that the hole in the ozone layer down at the south pole has expanded to affect southern australia. All that extra UV has begun to cause rampant mental illness among the politicians in that country. Why only politicians? Well I'm not sure of that yet but I don't think that matters much since its clear they're going mad.
The solution? Boot them out of office. If you can't do it at the ballot box, do it with the business end of a rifle. Oh, wait, they've already taken everyone's guns away down there and succeeded in convincing the population it was a good idea. Come to think of it, I wonder just how censor happy they would be if the citizens there were armed? One way or another the Australians really need to clean house down there since its hardly the government's job to tell anyone what they can look at.
If you take the word at face value then anyone who is not privileged is in fact under-privileged. By that definition the majority of people in this country are "underprivileged."
But that isn't what the word means of course. No, this particularly evasive euphemism is nothing but a PC (aka BS) term for being poor.
For the land of the free and the home of the brave there sure seem to be a lot of people who are either too much of a coward or are not at liberty to call a spade a spade.
Sad......
P.S. This post wasn't aimed directly as the previous poster, I know the term is used even by people who aren't full of shit (AKA politically correct)
I fear the forces of "law enforcement" far more than I do their new boogie man of choice, terrorists. I fear them more than I do drug dealers, kiddie porn perverts, communists, or any of the other boogie men used in the past to justify increased powers and decreased accountability or oversight.
What the government fears the people there is freedom. When the people fear the government there is tyrrany. Guess which scenario we live in?
...is censor happy "adults" who think that hiding the unpleasant or politically incorrect aspects of existance from them is somehow a good thing. This stems from our culture's insane belief that human beings below the magical age of 18 are "impressionable" to the point of being human tape recorders. This would be funny if the consequences weren't so severe for the young.
By the way, I turn 30 in less than a year so save your "wet behind the ears" responses for someone else.
Ever notice how job application forms don't have a date of birth field? Last time I checked it was illegal for employers to ask you what your age is. I might be wrong about this, but I really don't think so. Obviously I'm not a lawyer so take anything I say about legal matters with a grain of salt.
To me the best solution to your problem long term is to lie like a rug. It's none of their business how old you are. Tell them you're 23 or 24, or even older. Let them know you're married and have a child. Few 20 year olds outside a trailer park are married, let alone have children. Create and consistently present the facade of someone just a few years older and I suspect that your problems will disappear. Now obvioulsy that won't help you in your current position, but when you move to another job it sure will.
Is this dishonest? Yes, of course it is. But then lying so someone to prevent them from working to hurt you is hardly unethical. Lies that cause harm are the ones to worry about, not lies that avoid harm. How bad would you feel about lying to a Nazi about the location of a Jewish family? If someone is going to be so unethical themselves that they would seek to get rid of you out of jealousy or some other base emotion, then lying to them is the best thing you can do.
You're luckier than blacks and members of other persecuted groups. You can wholly and completely avoid the persecution altogether. The really nice thing is, if someone were to find out how old you are and use that as an excuse to fire you, you'd be able to take them to court and probably win. If they can't even ask how old you are, how are they supposed to justify firing you for finding out you're not as old as they thought you were?
Lee
Looking for an excuse for bicker and complain
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Hurd: H2 CD Images
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It seems like every time I turn around someone is finding a way to bitch, moan, and complain about something. The GPL buys don't like the BSD license. The BSD guys don't like the GPL. *BSD users don't like Linux and vice versa. Some people call a particular OS "GNU/Linux" while others just call it "Linux." Now we get to have the monolithic vs. microkernel debate....all over agein.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that most disputes that persist are in fact sources of entertainment or diversion rather than legitimate issues of importance. People get bored and engage in a high-tech version of the dispute from Gulliver's travels where two groups were fighting over which end of an egg should be cracked.
Let me give you all a little piece of advice. Think for yourself, form your own conclusions. It is not necessary that anyone agree with you, or that you agree with anyone else. Everyone is going to do exactly what they damn well please, including you, so quit yer bitching. Or at least find something more productive to discuss.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for open debates of issues. Its just that when those debates drag on forever and nothing gets resolved then they aren't serving any productive purpose. Instead they create division where none need occur.
Another thing to remember is that people are going to disagree on things. That is normal and not something to pick a fight over. Anytime I see a group of people in perfect, or near perfect, agreement on something it is a sign that people aren't thinking for themselves. Of course on the other hand when there is a group where no one agrees it is often the case that they are all just trying to disagree for its own sake. Neither situation is a good one.
Think for yourself and expect others to do the same. Sometimes you'll find agreement with another person. Sometimes you won't. Just because the two of you see things differently doesn't mean that only one of you is right, or that either of you is right for that matter. You've got to call 'em like you see 'em. If everyone were to do that the world would be a better place.
Where I come from the words "custom" and "proprietary" mean essentially the same thing. When I build a systme I can choose from a wide array of motherboards, cases, and other components. Later on I can upgrade any one of those components. Were I to buy a Compaq or a Mac, I would be stuck with a funky motherboard in a funky case. Were I to try and upgrade the system (other than simply augmenting it with more memory, new hard drives etc), I would be forced to cannibalize the old system for parts in order to build a new one. This is the bane of "brand name" computers. There are a few exceptions, such as Gateway. Whenever anyone asks me what kind of computer they should buy, I tell them to have someone build them one. If they are uneasy with that, I just tell them to buy a gateway. Any degree of component compatibility that macs current have is the result of the market forcing Apple's hand. I've got a quadra 700 here at home running NetBSD. Before that it was running System 7.5.3. When I wanted to add a CDROM drive I discovered that I had to hunt around on the net for hacked drivers because the standard cdrom extension looked for a proprietary tag in the CDROM's firmware, meaning that non-apple brand drives would not work. With the hacked driver my 24 speed teac worked just fine. The same was true with hard drives. I had to get a hacked formatting utility because the standard drive setup looked for, you guessed it, a tag in the drive's firmware. I suspect that even now Apple is pulling this kind of a stunt with these devices. If not I will be greatly relieved to hear it since I dread the day someone asks me to help them upgrade their G4 or iMac.
While I believe in God, I'm not foolish enough to believe myself wise enough to know who or what God is, or what he want from/with us, if anything. On the other hand I have a hard time believing that anyone else does either, seeing as how each culture's interpretation of the nature of God is a relfection of the culture itself, not the nature of God. The mythologies and dogmas that each religion brings to the table are to a large degree codified superstition. That is not to say that there is not truth to be found in many of them, only that you've got to study each with a critical eye and be ready and willing to disregard things that aren't true.
What exactly is supposed to be so controversial about this program? I've been using it for a month and a half now and I think it is great. The addition of quicktime support means fewer reboots into windows just to watch some silly movie or another. As for the sorenson business, I'd like to think that eventually MPEG-4 (DiVX) will overtake whatever hold this compression codec has. Open standards tend to win out over proprietary ones, even when the proprietary one is technically superior. Just look at what happened with Betamax vs. VHS.
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I was a scientologist for almost eight years and worked out in LA at "Big Blue." This complex used to be the Cedars of Sinai hospital but was purchased by Hubbard and company back in the 1970's. It is where ASHO, AOLA, and the LA orgs are, as well as a good portion of OSA. They've remodeled most everything there so some things might have changed since then.
In any case I am here to tell anyone who will listen that Scientology is evil. I don't make that kind of a claim lightly. Scientology is a cult made up of people who have ceased to think for themselves and are no longer acting in their own best interest but are instead being manipulated and coerced into living for the cult, to their own detriment. There are so many things that Scientology does that are wrong that it is difficult to know where to begin in detailing them all. Scientology is to me a weird conglomeration of Nazi-esque nonsense, corporate abuse of the public trust, and organized crime.
Others whose words are far better than mine have already detailed the nature of Scintology's evil far better than I can at 7 am. The link below points to a website that has just about every significant book written that exposes the evil nature of scientology:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/
I applaud the owner of this site for having the courage to make a stand against one of the most evil organizations of our time.
Lee Reynolds
The open architecture of the PC may have been accidental, but no one can argue that it was not successful. Many Macolytes like to scream and shout about Microsoft and how the Redmond dragon did them in. In truth it was not Microsoft but scores of companies all producing and/or selling compatible systems while simultaneously competing with one another on price and performance that did Apple in. Apple is an example of a failed monopoly. Microsoft's monopoly exists because it rode the wave of an open platform, the PC. Today Apple is an also-ran and has been for some time now. Microsoft has kept them on life support because they are useful as token "competition." What will happen when and if Microsoft is finally pimp slapped I don't know.
Lee
This whole business sounds VERY fishy to me. My suspicion is that this is nothing but the beginnings of a ploy at "social engineering." Right now the loony left has already infiltrated many public schools and instituted a bunch of BS, supposedly in order to preserve and raise the "self esteem" of students. The truth is that the loony left is bent on undermining western civilization as a whole, especially the middle class or "bourgeois." Most, if not all forms and examples of political correctness are nothing more than a part of this effort. This new "study" just seems to me to be the latest weapon in the ongoing war against common sense. It isn't enough to sucker people into believing that self esteem is more important character and achievement, but damaging someone's self esteem will not somehow make them stupid and damage their character.
I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying it. Those pieces of shit ought to be ashamed of themselves for even trying to con us with something so ridiculous.
All I can say is that there aren't enough libertarians around.
Lee
The problem here is more than that of companies being heavy handed and attempting to use force to silence people. The problem is that there are lawyers out there who are willing to be their mercenaries.
Lawyers like that are who give the legal profession as a whole a bad name.
I find myself having fantasies about lying in wait near the home of one of these lawyers and blowing their head to bits with a high powered rifle as they are out getting the paper in their bath robe. I won't do that of course, because I know that to do so would only cause more problems. As much as I hate these fuckers I don't want anyone else to do something like that either. There is more evil at work in the world than that represented by these lawyers. There are people and groups whose every thought and action is towards depriving others of liberty. Were someone to go on a shyster shooting spree it would only play into the hands of those who are working to destroy the second amendment (among other things).
Undermining the second amendment just to whack someone who is undermining the first isn't exactly a good idea in the long run. The first and second amendments are the bedrock of our democracy. They are what ensure that, even if all else fails, tyranny will not prevail.
Instead of shyster assasinations, what needs to happen is for news of cases of these SLAPP suits to be disseminated as widely as possible. Use the very thing these suits attack, the first amendment, to hurt the suits behind the suits. Create enough bad publicity that the suits become a double edged sword to anyone behind them. Imagine if a company lost 20% of its customers after SLAPPing someone. Would they do it again?
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. There are more threats to our freedoms from all sides than what most people are aware of. On the left you've got socialists, communists, political correctness, and your garden variety "liberals". On the right religious whacko's, corrupt corporations and "family values." Which side is right? If you ask me I'd say neither. Both are vile in my opinion. Both are equally harmful and undermine human rights, the only difference is the approach that is taken and the rhetoric and justifications that are used.
In the end however, it is not these evils that are the greatest threat. The greatest threat is that your average citizen is not aware of them, or does nothing about them when they are. All that is required for evil to win is for good people to do nothing. That is the status quo in America, people doing nothing. Those who are not vigilant, who do not fight back, are the true villans. The wolf is always at the door. That is the nature of the wolf. Blaming the wolf for getting in when someone opened the door for him isn't exactly rational. Its like blaming fire for burning a building when an arsonist started the blaze, or a car for killing a pedestrian when it was a drunk driver at the wheel. Its up to each of us to keep that door closed. When we fail we have no one but ourselves to blame.
Lee
Addendum:
Make that X/((1+inflation_rate)^y). So with an inflation rate of three percent its X/(1.03^Y). If you don't add in the one you end up with a lot MORE money than when you started, not less.
Lee
Instead of charging someone X number of dollars for the cost of recycling, they should charge X*2 number of dollars and then PAY each person who brings in a computer X number of dollars.
That way people would have an incentive to do the right thing instead of just dumping it someplace and the program would pay for itself due to inflation and the fact that not EVERYONE is going to recycle, even if it pays.
As for the inflation angle, it works like this. If someone pays you X number of dollars and Y number of years later you pay them back the same exact ammount of money, well then you're actually paying them X/(inflation_rate^Y) in real dollars. This is why you almost NEVER see interest free loans, the lenders lose money on them. In the case of computers, the lifespan is short enough that the devaluation of the money from inflation would not be so great as to reduce it to nothing.
Lee
Sun offers Solaris 8 on x86 at no charge for non-commerical and educational use. It does not offer Solaris for free for commercial use. Also there isn't going to be a version of Solaris 9 for the PC, meaning users are being hung out to dry. I shouldn't even have to mention the fact that the source code to Solaris is proprietary.
Linux on the other hand is FREE in every sense. It's free to use, free to look at, free to change, and free to redistribute.
I don't know if you're just trolling or if you're seriously deranged. If its the former take some grow up pills. if its the latter take some happy pills. Of course if you're already on drugs JUST SAY NO!
Why would anyone WANT to run classic MacOS apps on a PC? The classic OS was one of the main things that has hobbled Apple over the years, trying to emulate/replicate it on another platform would be an exercise in applied stupidity. OS-X is a viable OS, previous versions were not, at least not when compared to Linux, BeOS, NT, etc. The lack of memory protection and reliance on cooperative multitasking alone are enough to make me drop it in the circular file. If I wanted those "features" on a PC, I'd use Windows 3.1.
If Apple wanted to create an emulator for the PC to run classic MacOS applictions, ARDI would be the very first place to shop. However an emulator is not a native port, which was my point to begin with. Any port of OS-X to intel would be better off without lugging the albatross of cross platform legacy code compatibility with it. If someone wants to run old mac programs they should run it on a mac, not a PC.
Cringely mentioned a company named ARDI. This is a company that for many years has been working on a Mac hardware and OS emulation environment for PCs. The product is called Executor and it will run many 68k mac Applications. It does not rely on Apple roms or on the MacOS. It is also VERY FAST. There is work being done on a PPC version, but I don't know how far along it is.
In any case I just wanted to point out that what ARDI does would do nothing to help Apple port OSX over to intel. ARDI produces an interesting emulator, but what is needed is a native port of the system itself. Not to mention the fact that Executor is for the 68k and OS-X is written for the PPC, not exactly an insignificant difference.
There is already a version of Darwin for x86. In case you're not familiar, Darwin is the underlying BSD/Mach core OS that OS-X is based upon. Creating a complete port of OS-X would involve porting the upper layers of the system such as Aqua, the upper layer API systems, and the GUI, among other things. Since these layers are undoubtedly written in C and Objective C (another story), and the low-level OS inferfaces they rely on would be the same for the PPC and x86 versions of Darwin, porting them should be very easy to do.
Its kind of like Linux itself. There are x86 versions, Alpha versions, and even PPC versions. These versions are 99% source code compatible. Meaning that code written on one will compile and run on the others with VERY FEW if any changes. The same should be true of OS-X. In fact I would not be a bit suprised if there is already a complete version of OS-X for x86 today. The hackers (!= crackers) at Apple would just be too tempted not to port it as an experiment with Darwin already existing on x86. It would also be created in order for the company to hedge its bets. Should Apple ever have to drop their hardware line, a ready to go version of OS-X for intel would be their primary escape strategy.
Do I expect to see this version of OS-X? Not anytime soon. We may never see it. Back in the 80's Apple developed an x86 version of their classic OS with Novell, it was never released and the project it was developed as part of was dropped. There was also a version of MacOS developed for Apollo to run on their Domain workstations (Apollo was bought out by HP some time ago). This project was also scrapped when Apple dumped Apollo and began trying to cozy up to Sun. So seeking an alternate platform for their operating systems is nothing new, its just that we've never seen any prior examples of this marketed.
Lee
Remember a while back when Microsoft tried to buy Corel? That was blocked by the SEC if I recall, but that didn't stop Microsoft from investing in Corel and thereby gaining influence, even if it is behind the scenes under the table influence. It was right around this time that Wordperfect for Linux was dropped as a future product, Corel Linux itself was dropped, Wine development ceased, and the price on the windows version of their Wordperfect Office suite was raised significantly. Coincidence?
The Wordperfect suite was beginning to make some inroads into Microsoft's market share before this happened. I remember you could get the Wordperfect suite for a couple hundred bucks while the Microsoft suite was five hundred if you were lucky (not counting upgrades). Now the price is higher and its progress into MS-Office territory has slowed or stopped.
Sounds to me like a case of Microsoft castrating the competition by investing in it, just like they did with Apple, although in Apple's case it was investing to keep the company alive as token "competition" rather than to remove a real threat.
Lee
The GLX portion of th nvidia drivers doesn't seem to care what kernel revision you're running on. The kernel module portion does however. I've been running the preempt patch for some time now with several revisions of Nvidia's drivers. Just get the SRPMS and recompile them. Or get the TGZ versions if you're running a non-RPM distribution (slackware, debian, etc).
I don't know what problems others have or have not had, but I've never had a bit of trouble with the preempt patch.
Wasn't there an article on here a week or two ago about how some cable companies are trying to thwart users who set up in house lans and do NAT? The main sentiment I heard in response to that article was that the cable companies should simply charge people according to the bandwidth they use. Now we hear of a cable company doing just that and I hear a bunch of bitching. I'm sorry folks, but you can't have it both ways. These companies are in business to make money. I get annoyed when I see price gouging and greed, but that isn't what this sounds like. If it is then that means that high profit margins will encourage the entry of competitors into the market, at which point competition will drive the prices back down again.
Lee
Lets forget about OS-X for a moment. What LinuxPPC does is fix the mac by providing a real operating system for it. There are macs where I work, and every time I'm stuck using one I start getting crazy notions in my head about taking a sledge hammer to them all, or finding some other way of destroying them. The reason has nothing to do with the hardware they are running. They're not super fast, but I'm not particularly picky in that area. What bugs me about them is the antique operating system they're running. If I wanted cooperative multi-tasking and no memory protection between apps, I'd run windows 3.1. When I sit down in front of a computer I expect the system to be responsive to me, regardless of what it is doing in the background.
One day about a year ago I loaded up the PPC version of SuSE 7.0 onto one of the macs. Lo and behold!!! A new computer was born! Or at least it seemed that way. The computer actually seemed to run FASTER as well as being infinitely more responsive. I was also a great relief to escape from the Macs GUI, which I find cumbersome. It was like I was trying to run with a cinder block tied to my leg and someone just cut the cord. Unfortunately I eventually had to wipe Linux and reinstall MacOS-9 on it.
Nowadays we have OS-X, which is about 6 years late, but better late than never. Its GUI isn't on par with KDE, but its far better than the previous MacOS versions. Its also responsive! Its great to actually be able to have my computer wait on me rather than the other way around. Its not terribly fast, but I'm not going to complain! Much better that it take longer to do things in the background but be more responsive in the foreground than it lock me out. Hopefully IBM/Motorola/Apple will be able to push the PPC architecture further in terms of clock rate.
Then of course there are the standard form-factor PPC motherboards that will soon be available. Whether they will ever outperform an Athlon based system is doubtful, but the fact that they are there and available is a good thing.
Lee
Actually Linux distributors can put anything on their CD's they want, provided that they have the permission of whomever owns the code. Debian does refuse to put anything in their distribution that isn't free as in speech, but that is their choice.
Lee
The IBM AT (286) came out in 1984, the XT (8088) in 81, and the 8086/88 itself back when disco was still very much the rage and I was in grade school. I cannot think of any reason we should give a rat's ass whether any compiler can create code for these chips anymore. They don't have enough power to run anything more than a text based dumb terminal anyway. My Ti-92 calculator has a more powerful CPU in it (68000) than an XT. We might as well worry about whether GCC can create code for a PDP-11 while we're at it.
Making an open source version of dos would have been a great idea 10 or 15 years ago, but today it just doesn't matter. Is anyone's aversion to MS stuff so strong that they would rather reinvent a version of DOS instead of just using 6.22? There is DRDOS/OpenDOS/whatever-they're-calling-it-now if you don't like MS-DOS.
The only area where 8 and 16 bit chips are of any importance is in embedded systems with low performance requirements. The good news is that for the 68HC11, the most popular microcontroller around, there is a GCC cross compiler available. I've downloaded it and played with it myself, it works.
Lee
The more I hear about pointless censorship in Australia, the more I'm convinced that the hole in the ozone layer down at the south pole has expanded to affect southern australia. All that extra UV has begun to cause rampant mental illness among the politicians in that country. Why only politicians? Well I'm not sure of that yet but I don't think that matters much since its clear they're going mad.
The solution? Boot them out of office. If you can't do it at the ballot box, do it with the business end of a rifle. Oh, wait, they've already taken everyone's guns away down there and succeeded in convincing the population it was a good idea. Come to think of it, I wonder just how censor happy they would be if the citizens there were armed? One way or another the Australians really need to clean house down there since its hardly the government's job to tell anyone what they can look at.
Lee
TV licensing? What the $%#@#$?
What exactly does "underprivileged" mean anyway?
If you take the word at face value then anyone who is not privileged is in fact under-privileged. By that definition the majority of people in this country are "underprivileged."
But that isn't what the word means of course. No, this particularly evasive euphemism is nothing but a PC (aka BS) term for being poor.
For the land of the free and the home of the brave there sure seem to be a lot of people who are either too much of a coward or are not at liberty to call a spade a spade.
Sad......
P.S. This post wasn't aimed directly as the previous poster, I know the term is used even by people who aren't full of shit (AKA politically correct)
Lee
I fear the forces of "law enforcement" far more than I do their new boogie man of choice, terrorists. I fear them more than I do drug dealers, kiddie porn perverts, communists, or any of the other boogie men used in the past to justify increased powers and decreased accountability or oversight.
What the government fears the people there is freedom. When the people fear the government there is tyrrany. Guess which scenario we live in?
Lee
...is censor happy "adults" who think that hiding the unpleasant or politically incorrect aspects of existance from them is somehow a good thing. This stems from our culture's insane belief that human beings below the magical age of 18 are "impressionable" to the point of being human tape recorders. This would be funny if the consequences weren't so severe for the young.
By the way, I turn 30 in less than a year so save your "wet behind the ears" responses for someone else.
Lee
Ever notice how job application forms don't have a date of birth field? Last time I checked it was illegal for employers to ask you what your age is. I might be wrong about this, but I really don't think so. Obviously I'm not a lawyer so take anything I say about legal matters with a grain of salt.
To me the best solution to your problem long term is to lie like a rug. It's none of their business how old you are. Tell them you're 23 or 24, or even older. Let them know you're married and have a child. Few 20 year olds outside a trailer park are married, let alone have children. Create and consistently present the facade of someone just a few years older and I suspect that your problems will disappear. Now obvioulsy that won't help you in your current position, but when you move to another job it sure will.
Is this dishonest? Yes, of course it is. But then lying so someone to prevent them from working to hurt you is hardly unethical. Lies that cause harm are the ones to worry about, not lies that avoid harm. How bad would you feel about lying to a Nazi about the location of a Jewish family? If someone is going to be so unethical themselves that they would seek to get rid of you out of jealousy or some other base emotion, then lying to them is the best thing you can do.
You're luckier than blacks and members of other persecuted groups. You can wholly and completely avoid the persecution altogether. The really nice thing is, if someone were to find out how old you are and use that as an excuse to fire you, you'd be able to take them to court and probably win. If they can't even ask how old you are, how are they supposed to justify firing you for finding out you're not as old as they thought you were?
Lee
It seems like every time I turn around someone is finding a way to bitch, moan, and complain about something. The GPL buys don't like the BSD license. The BSD guys don't like the GPL. *BSD users don't like Linux and vice versa. Some people call a particular OS "GNU/Linux" while others just call it "Linux." Now we get to have the monolithic vs. microkernel debate....all over agein.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that most disputes that persist are in fact sources of entertainment or diversion rather than legitimate issues of importance. People get bored and engage in a high-tech version of the dispute from Gulliver's travels where two groups were fighting over which end of an egg should be cracked.
Let me give you all a little piece of advice. Think for yourself, form your own conclusions. It is not necessary that anyone agree with you, or that you agree with anyone else. Everyone is going to do exactly what they damn well please, including you, so quit yer bitching. Or at least find something more productive to discuss.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for open debates of issues. Its just that when those debates drag on forever and nothing gets resolved then they aren't serving any productive purpose. Instead they create division where none need occur.
Another thing to remember is that people are going to disagree on things. That is normal and not something to pick a fight over. Anytime I see a group of people in perfect, or near perfect, agreement on something it is a sign that people aren't thinking for themselves. Of course on the other hand when there is a group where no one agrees it is often the case that they are all just trying to disagree for its own sake. Neither situation is a good one.
Think for yourself and expect others to do the same. Sometimes you'll find agreement with another person. Sometimes you won't. Just because the two of you see things differently doesn't mean that only one of you is right, or that either of you is right for that matter. You've got to call 'em like you see 'em. If everyone were to do that the world would be a better place.
Lee
Where I come from the words "custom" and "proprietary" mean essentially the same thing. When I build a systme I can choose from a wide array of motherboards, cases, and other components. Later on I can upgrade any one of those components. Were I to buy a Compaq or a Mac, I would be stuck with a funky motherboard in a funky case. Were I to try and upgrade the system (other than simply augmenting it with more memory, new hard drives etc), I would be forced to cannibalize the old system for parts in order to build a new one. This is the bane of "brand name" computers. There are a few exceptions, such as Gateway. Whenever anyone asks me what kind of computer they should buy, I tell them to have someone build them one. If they are uneasy with that, I just tell them to buy a gateway. Any degree of component compatibility that macs current have is the result of the market forcing Apple's hand. I've got a quadra 700 here at home running NetBSD. Before that it was running System 7.5.3. When I wanted to add a CDROM drive I discovered that I had to hunt around on the net for hacked drivers because the standard cdrom extension looked for a proprietary tag in the CDROM's firmware, meaning that non-apple brand drives would not work. With the hacked driver my 24 speed teac worked just fine. The same was true with hard drives. I had to get a hacked formatting utility because the standard drive setup looked for, you guessed it, a tag in the drive's firmware. I suspect that even now Apple is pulling this kind of a stunt with these devices. If not I will be greatly relieved to hear it since I dread the day someone asks me to help them upgrade their G4 or iMac.
While I believe in God, I'm not foolish enough to believe myself wise enough to know who or what God is, or what he want from/with us, if anything. On the other hand I have a hard time believing that anyone else does either, seeing as how each culture's interpretation of the nature of God is a relfection of the culture itself, not the nature of God. The mythologies and dogmas that each religion brings to the table are to a large degree codified superstition. That is not to say that there is not truth to be found in many of them, only that you've got to study each with a critical eye and be ready and willing to disregard things that aren't true.
Lee
What exactly is supposed to be so controversial about this program? I've been using it for a month and a half now and I think it is great. The addition of quicktime support means fewer reboots into windows just to watch some silly movie or another. As for the sorenson business, I'd like to think that eventually MPEG-4 (DiVX) will overtake whatever hold this compression codec has. Open standards tend to win out over proprietary ones, even when the proprietary one is technically superior. Just look at what happened with Betamax vs. VHS.
Lee